It is common practice to carefully weight the heads of golf clubs in order to achieve the desired swing and balance characteristics. This weighting procedure is tedious, time consuming and costly and is usually done on a trial and error basis which adds significantly to the ultimate cost of high quality clubs.
Some devices are known in the prior art for testing golf clubs, either statically or dynamically, to measure their performance characteristics as by timing pendulum-like oscillations or measuring moment of inertia or torque exerted. Insofar as is known, no prior art test apparatus has been widely accepted in the art and the tedious and costly manual methods of weighting and balancing golf clubs continues to prevail to the detriment of the golfer.
In light of the above, it is the object of this invention to provide a truly practical and efficient dynamic tester for golf clubs wherein the club is precisely gripped at its handle and swung through an arc in a manner closely resembling the natural swinging of the club by a golfer while the club shaft is at an angle to the vertical closely approximating its natural angle during a swing. The test apparatus measures and records centrifugal force or pull along the club shaft axis for a given angular velocity of club movement or swing. Weights are carefully added or removed from the club head until exactly the desired swing velocity and centrifugal pull characteristics are achieved. The invention is thought to be a new approach to the testing and matching up of golf clubs which is so important in providing a high quality customized set of clubs.
Other features and advantages of the invention will appear to those skilled in the art during the course of the following description.
To comply with the requirement to disclose known prior art under 37 C.F.R. 1.56, the following domestic prior U.S. patents are made of record herein:
Nos. 1,351,768 2,094,806 PA1 Nos. 1,516,786 2,108,877 PA1 Nos. 1,742,394 2,349,736 PA1 Nos. 1,825,172 2,371,523 PA1 Nos. 1,953,916 3,377,845.